14 nov

A Syrian newspaper says that the long-awaited international peace conference on the Syrian crisis, known as Geneva 2 conference, will be held on December 12.
The Al-Watan reported the date on Thursday. It cited French diplomats as saying that US Secretary of State John Kerry had told his French counterpart Laurent Fabius that UN chief Ban Ki-moon would announce the date on November 25.
The daily said that a Syrian government source refused to confirm the report and that an adviser to the foreign-backed opposition, the so-called Syrian National Coalition (SNC), said that the date for the conference was not finalized.

The Syrian government will send a delegation to Moscow on Monday for talks with Russian officials on preparations for a proposed peace conference in Geneva, an official said.
The source said on Thursday the delegation would be made up of President Bashar al-Assad’s presidential adviser Buthaina Shaaban, Deputy Foreign Minister Faisal Muqdad and Ahmad Arnous, the ministry’s senior official on European affairs.

For the first time since 2011, the Russian and Syrian presidents spoke on the phone to discuss developments in the Syria crisis. Vladimir Putin called Bashar Assad about the Geneva-2 peace talks and the destruction of Syria’s chemical stockpile.

Senior U.S. intelligence analysts disagreed with the Obama administration’s certainty that the Syrian government was behind the Aug. 21 chemical weapons attack, but that dissent was suppressed amid the rush to a near war.